The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “Oh yes, I know Kester liked to pretend he was a pacifist and I know a lot of people thought he was soft, but that was all stuff and nonsense! The truth was he was as tough as they come, just like his mother—and there was a game old war-horse if ever there was one

  “No, I certainly shed no tears for Kester when he died and I certainly didn’t waste time wondering about how it had happened, but for what it’s worth I don’t think he committed suicide. If he was the suicidal type I think he would have killed himself after Anna died, but he didn’t, did he, and if he could survive that then I’d say he could survive just about anything. I suppose his death was an accident. Accidents do happen, don’t they, and he wouldn’t be the first person who’d drowned on an expedition to the Worm. But one thing I know for certain, old boy, and I was so glad it was clearly proved at the inquest: Harry didn’t kill him. No matter how much you may be worrying about Kester, at least you don’t have to start worrying about that.…”

  XV

  She offered me more coffee and there was a pause while she refilled my cup. Then as I reached for the sugar bowl she began talking again.

  “Your father had a rough time,” she said. “I felt sorry for him. I’m very fond of your father, Hal. There are plenty of people who can’t stand him, but I think he’s a good man. He was a loyal husband to Bella, and … well, you’re grown up now and I can admit to you that his marriage couldn’t have been easy.”

  There was a silence. I was stirring my coffee but my hand halted. I glanced up.

  “Yes,” said Eleanor reflectively, not looking at me, “he must have had a hard time. Bella … well, I was fond of your mother, Hal; she was a sweet child in many ways but she wasn’t very good at being grown-up. I don’t mean she was mentally defective. Mentally she was all there—just—but emotionally she never grew much older than thirteen. And that’s a burden for a man, you know—well, of course you’d know. You’re a man yourself and you can imagine now what it must have been like for your father to come home from the war when he was your age and find he had four little sons, money worries and a wife who couldn’t cope with any of them. Poor Bella! She needed looking after almost as much as you children did.”

  There was another silence. The spoon was still stationary in my cup.

  “But your father stuck by her,” said Eleanor. “In the end he failed to cope with this awful obsession she had to be pregnant the whole time, but my God, at least no one could say he didn’t try. Heavens, I even remember him going with her to the gynecologist because she insisted on taking over the birth-control problem and he wanted to make quite sure she could manage! Of course she got pregnant straightaway but that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Poor Harry, he was absolutely frantic. I felt so sorry for him. What a mess! But it wasn’t his fault.”

  The coffee had long since stopped swirling. I removed my spoon and laid it in my saucer.

  “But he stuck by her,” repeated Eleanor, “and after she died he stuck by you four boys. To be honest I never thought he would. I thought he’d palm you off on his father and Bronwen and make a fresh start with another woman as soon as it was decently possible, but no, he stayed with you at the Manor and he struggled on alone. I suppose you probably took it all for granted and grumbled about him behind his back—children are such insensitive little brutes!—but I admired him. Parenthood’s a hard grind. It’s all very easy for childless men like Kester to give little tea parties and play at being a father, but when all’s said and done that’s got very little to do, has it, with what parenthood’s really all about.”

  She stopped. I had become aware of a tap dripping in the nearby kitchen. It dripped on and on and on.

  “Of course we all know Harry was a war hero,” said Eleanor, “but I think his heroism really began when the war was over. I’ll never believe that Harry was the villain of the Oxmoon saga, Hal. I think the real villain was your cousin Kester.”

  XVI

  NOTES ON AUNT ELEANOR:

  Her views on Kester ought to be valueless because of her rampant prejudice against him, yet her opinion chimes with Gerry’s so I can’t dismiss it out of hand. This vision of a dangerous aggressive Kester I find very disturbing. It’s so contrary to all the memories I have of him.

  VERDICT: From the point of view of my investigation it was disappointing. I found out nothing new about Thomas’s death and merely got another vote for the accident theory. Yet from a strictly personal point of view I can hardly write the interview off as a waste of time. The truth surfaced here all right, but it wasn’t the truth about Kester and Thomas. It was the truth about my parents’ marriage.

  XVII

  I closed my notebook. I was alone in the living room as Eleanor had had to leave to see her pig man, but she had given me permission to use her phone. I was sitting by the phone but had so far been unable to begin my calls. I was too busy imagining myself with four children, constant money worries and a wife with an emotional age of thirteen.

  Eventually I opened my notebook again and found my list of witnesses. Lance had given me Sian’s London number. I sat looking at it for a while and then finally I pulled myself together, lifted the receiver and began to dial the number of that trendy flat in the heart of Knightsbridge.

  Sian was only eight years my senior. Having made an astonishing marriage some years ago to a viscount who had been at school with her at Bedales, she had somehow managed to keep her head in a chaotic peripatetic world. Her husband was a rock fan who had just launched his own record label and they spent their time commuting between New York, Nashville, London, Juan-les-Pins and, occasionally, the Bahamas. The viscount was energetic but naive. I gave him two years in the music business, no more, and sensed Sian would be greatly relieved when it was all over.

  After the opening pleasantries I kept my explanations minimal but Sian had no trouble understanding them.

  “Of course it’s important to get the past straight,” she said. “I had quite a past to straighten out myself, what with being born a bastard and having to adjust to Dad glissading back into our lives and smothering us all with moonlight and roses and doing the done thing. Poor Dad, he was sweet but he did cause an awful lot of trouble—just like Kester. He was sweet too but just look at all the trouble he caused.”

  “Do you think he committed suicide?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you think he drowned accidentally?”

  “I don’t think he did drown accidentally.”

  “You mean—”

  “I think he was murdered,” said Sian, “and I think Harry killed him.”

  XVIII

  “Sorry,” said Sian. “I’ve never said that to you before because after all Harry’s your father, and even though you do detest him you might at rock bottom be fond of him as well. But if you’re trying to straighten out the past I won’t help you by lying, will I?

  “Yes, I’m sure Kester was murdered, although the stupid thing is that my judgment is based purely on feminine intuition and I haven’t any real evidence to support it. I’ll tell you what happened: On the day before Kester died my mother went over to Rhossili to see him and I went too, acting as her chauffeuse. I was at home because I’d had a bust-up with David in London—it was before we were married and he wanted me to sleep with him—as if I would after what had happened to my mother! Anyway I was miserable as hell and finding driving therapeutic—all very Freudian, of course—so as I was making love to the steering wheel the whole damn time Mum asked me to give her a ride to Rhossili. When we arrived it was early evening and Evan had just left after delivering Kester’s radio. Kester himself was in very good spirits. I wouldn’t go so far as Evan does and say he was euphoric but he was definitely cheerful. However my mother was worried about him for some reason and I could see they wanted to be alone together, so I went out for a mini-stroll to the church and back. I didn’t exactly eavesdrop on my return but as I passed the open window of the living room I heard Kester say, ‘Of course Harry might murder m
e if I do this but I don’t think he’d be quite such a fool.’

  “Well, when I heard he was dead—after being followed by Harry to the Worm—of course I asked my mother what he had said to her but she wouldn’t speak of it. In fact she never would speak of it to any of us and I’m positive she didn’t tell the police. Neither did I. Harry and I weren’t close but he was my brother and I didn’t want him winding up on the gallows.

  “But I did unburden myself to Evan and after we’d discussed Kester’s remark at some length, I came to the conclusion that the only explanation was that Kester wanted Oxmoon back. Why else would Kester think Harry might try to murder him? However, Evan said my theory didn’t jibe with Kester’s story that the loss of Oxmoon had liberated him—Evan just thought that Kester had been talking facetiously to my mother and that I’d heard the remark out of context. You know how sometimes one says ‘Heavens, so-and-so will murder me if I do this!’

  “I could see Evan’s point of view, but I still wasn’t wholly convinced. I just couldn’t get over the sinister fact that Kester had talked of being murdered by Harry and twenty-four hours later he was dead after Harry had followed him to the Worm. The more I thought of it, the more intuitively convinced I became that Harry had indeed killed him, although paradoxically the moment I tried to sit down and work out a rational theory nothing seemed to make sense. For instance, if I was right and Kester really had wanted Oxmoon back, why not stay in Dublin and negotiate with Harry through his lawyers? Or if he had no legal case for demanding Oxmoon’s return, why not involve the family, who would almost certainly have been kind and sympathetic, and approach Harry through someone like Uncle Edmund? Why come back to Gower and enter into some sort of macabre sparring match? And then, of course, one gets into the mystery of what really did happen at the Worm that evening. If Kester was alive to the possibility that Harry might murder him, he wouldn’t have loafed around on the Inner Head that night and waited for Harry to catch him up. Yet unless Kester was waiting on the Inner Head, Harry couldn’t have caught him up, killed him and still got back across the Shipway in time to beat the tide. And we know Harry did beat that tide because he had that genuine alibi—oh yes, that alibi was real enough, no question about it. Mum and I could both testify that it wasn’t something Harry and Dafydd invented later to cover Harry’s tracks.

  “Dafydd was visiting Mum that day. We all went to the cinema and then directly after the matinee Dafydd said he had to run off and buy a washer before the shops closed. He did. Then later, after supper, I volunteered to drive him home—he didn’t have a car in those days. He said, ‘Okay, but don’t take me home, take me out to Rhossili so I can fix the bloody tap—I should have done it three days ago and I’m feeling guilty.’ So I actually drove him to Kester’s cottage. I offered to wait while he changed the washer but he said no, he’d prefer to walk home, so off I went back to Swansea again.

  “You see the point I’m making, don’t you? There was no way they could have cooked that alibi after Harry received Kester’s note that afternoon, the note inviting Harry to call on him. If Harry had then phoned Dafydd and said, ‘Look, I’m going off to Rhossili to murder the sod—do me a favor and give me an alibi,’ Mum and I would have known about the call—and so would the village of Penhale, since all calls in those days went through the village switchboard.

  “The only way you can argue that the alibi was faked is to say that Harry and Dafydd arranged it well in advance, but then you get into the problem of explaining how Harry knew Kester was going out to the Worm that night. In fact unless he was clairvoyant there was no way he could have foreseen that it was going to be of crucial importance to him that Dafydd turned up at the cottage at around eight thirty that evening to change the washer. No, that alibi’s genuine, Hal—the police couldn’t crack it and the coroner accepted it without a murmur. So that means Harry couldn’t have murdered Kester. Logically, rationally, I know I’ve got to accept that. And yet … and yet … well, it’s stupid, isn’t it, but I still have this awful feeling that he killed him. …”

  XIX

  NOTES ON SIAN:

  Her evidence is certainly odd. It’s tempting to take Evan’s view that she got the wrong end of the stick during her brief moment of eavesdropping, but she doesn’t believe she did, and her firsthand impression should count for more than Evan’s secondhand deduction. So what does this mean? It means that Sian’s raised questions not about my father but about Kester. What on earth was he up to? If he was really after Oxmoon, why tell Evan he was liberated without it and then tell Bronwen he wanted it back? And assuming Sian’s right that he wanted to reclaim Oxmoon, how good a chance did he have of succeeding?

  I wouldn’t rate it high. To get the deed of gift declared invalid he would have had to plead he had signed it under duress—but Declan was laughed out of court when he tried to spin the extortion yarn. Would Kester have been more credible than Declan? Almost certainly not, as he was a neurotic subject to nervous breakdowns. He’d also have to bear in mind that he’d be battling against a man who at that time had a dazzling reputation as a war hero and who according to Evan was a brilliant witness. Kester would have been batting on a very sticky wicket, and if I’d been my father in those circumstances I certainly wouldn’t have murdered Kester. I’d have sat tight and waited.

  VERDICT: Sian’s intuition was interesting, but basically she underlined the two big objections to any theory of murder: (1) The rising tide and the cast-iron alibi give my father no opportunity, and (2) my father had no real motive. So once again I’m left asking myself: If he did do it, how was it done and why?

  But I’ve never believed he did it and despite Sian’s intuition I don’t believe it now. As Kester himself apparently said to Bronwen: not such a fool.

  Soldier on.

  XX

  “Well, darling,” said Aunt Marian far away in Kent where she was enjoying her recent second marriage to a stockbroker, “of course Kester committed suicide. Could anything be more typical? He simply adored melodrama, my dear, always did, and I can quite see him striding out along the Worm into the golden sunset and diving into the sea—I mean, as Harry said, it was all so absolutely in character, wasn’t it, but my God, what a trauma we all went through afterwards! It simply broke up my marriage to Rory. Well, let’s face it, the marriage spent most of its time on the rocks anyway but at least Kester’s death gave me the push I needed to walk out for good. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Rory, ‘I know Harry and I aren’t close but he’s my only brother—’ Well, of course, Hal darling, I know I do have other brothers and they’re all simply adorable, but somehow I’ve always found it just a little difficult to remember I’m related to them—although I was devoted to darling Bronwen of course, always was … Where was I? Oh yes. ‘Harry’s my only brother,’ I said to Rory, ‘and no man, not even my husband, calls him a murderer in my presence. This is the end, darling’ I said, and started to pack a suitcase. ‘It’s the truth!’ he yells—of course he’s simply pie-eyed with whisky—‘Declan and I have proved it! Harry killed Kester!’ so I said, ‘Good—it’s about time someone killed him,’ and then Rory started crashing around trying to hit me and frankly, darling, violence is not my scene so I drew the line, as darling Papa would have said, and wound up in the divorce court. I only wish I’d done it long before but I had the children to think of and then Rory was always rather heaven in bed—I can say that to you now you’re grown up, can’t I? So super to have a nephew who’s a pop singer! I’m the envy of all my friends …

  “Yes, that’s right, darling—no, you didn’t mishear. Rory did say he and Declan had proved Harry murdered Kester, but of course that was just exaggeration and you can be sure they proved no such thing. Harry might certainly have felt like murdering Kester now and then but he would never have done it, never, and anyway he couldn’t have done it, could he, because of that ghastly tide. ‘What about the tide?’ I screamed at Rory when he was making his awful accusations. ‘Fuck the tide!’ he screamed back and
tried to rape me. God, what a marriage it was, how did I stand it. …

  “Well, yes, darling, actually Rory did say a little more than that. He said Harry could have killed Kester and still got back across the Shipway to beat the tide. He said obviously Kester was waiting for Harry on the Inner Head and Harry lied when he said Kester had kept going. So I said, ‘The coroner didn’t think Harry lied!’ But Rory said that was because the coroner had been at Harrow with darling Papa and was constitutionally incapable of believing an Old Harrovian like Harry would either commit murder or tell lies in the witness box. …

  “Oh, of course I was at the inquest! I remember I wore this simply stunning hat … What? Oh darling, of course Harry was telling the truth! He was quite wonderful, so calm, so rational, so … well, there’s only one phrase for it, Hal: he was such a gentleman. It was simply impossible to believe he wouldn’t do the done thing at all times. Well, I know Declan and Rory didn’t believe him but then they were hopelessly prejudiced, weren’t they? I remember I said to Rory when he and Declan came back from the Worm’s Head—oh yes, they went out there after the inquest, didn’t you know? They actually knew the Worm quite well because before Aunt Ginevra married Uncle Robert Declan and Rory spent some time at Oxmoon and my grandfather often took them on expeditions to the coast, but after all that was a long time ago and I suppose they wanted to refresh their memories about what it was like out there. Rory even had the nerve to call it reconstructing the crime—honestly! I could have murdered him … although actually the Worm nearly murdered them both instead, and serve them right too. Well, you can imagine it, can’t you, two overweight men, both past fifty, toiling to and fro across the Shipway! They took all day over it, came back wrecked and killed a bottle of whisky between them. God knows why they didn’t drop dead from coronaries then and there. …